Introduction
I definitely had a victim mindset when I was younger, and I can speak to this from a place of raw experience. Here, we explore a journey I had to fight through—shedding that old habit of playing the victim and stepping into an empowered mindset that’s transformed my life. If you’re craving personal growth, yearning for control over your destiny, or simply tired of excuses holding you back, this article uncovers the roots of victimhood and lays out practical steps to reclaim your power. It’s about crafting a life of success and sophistication, one bold choice at a time.
What Is a Victim Mindset?
A victim mindset is an attitude where people perceive themselves as powerless and blame external circumstances or other people for their problems. It’s a mindset that’s basically chronic complaining, excuses, and avoiding responsibility. I used to be really, really good at making myself the victim. I would say stuff like, “Oh, I always have bad luck,” or “Just things don’t really work out for me. Things work out for better people, you know, for other people. Other people get lucky, but I have bad luck.” I would make excuses for everything in my life and take no responsibility for basically anything.
The problem is that most people are not really even aware that they’re using and playing the victim. It’s just something they’ve been doing for so long. The biggest problem with playing the victim is that if you play the victim, it completely takes all of the control out of your life. If you’re constantly blaming other people or the economy or other circumstances—everybody else—then you have no control in your life. If you make yourself the victim, you’re basically resigning to the fact of, like, “I can’t control my life, and I’m just at the whim of whatever the universe wants to beat me over the head with.”
If you’re reading this, you want your life to be different. You want your life to be better. You want to grow, and you want to improve. But you cannot change your life for the better if you have a victim mindset because you are never going to be in control of your life. It seems like more and more people are at least presenting a victim mindset than they ever have. It’s kind of like this cartoon I saw like 15 years ago. It’s a cartoon of this guy on stage, and he’s in front of a podium, and he says, “Who wants change?” And all of the people in the crowd raise their hand. Then right under it, there’s another picture of him, and he says, “Who wants to change?” And everybody’s hand is down. It’s kind of like the world that we live in.
Where Does a Victim Mindset Come From?
The victim mindset often takes root in—you guessed it—childhood. Yep, that’s what we seem to talk about a lot, isn’t it? Usually, it’s a condition that comes from childhood. It is a protection mechanism in some sort of way that you developed, or it can also be a way that you got attention or love from your parents. Maybe you had a big family, and the way you only really got attention or felt like you got attention was when you played the victim or something was wrong.
Parenting style really plays a critical role in this as well. There are some overprotective parents—like if you had overprotective parents, their attempt to protect their children are basically saying to the child, “Hey, the world is too dangerous for you, and you’re incapable of navigating it alone.” And so, in turn, they grow up and they feel like, “Well, I’m helpless, you know, I’m dependent, and so I can’t really do anything on my own,” and then they start blaming outside circumstances. On the other hand, the parental style of being an overly controlling parent can do this as well because it instills fear in the child and this belief that your actions are always dictated by external forces. And so it kind of takes the autonomy out of the child and their personal responsibility.
One of the things I’ve been looking at a lot recently is the benefit of letting your children fail and mess up. Obviously, be there to support, but letting them mess up without stepping in—because when you step in, that unconsciously says to the child, “Hey, you’re not able to do this, let me do it for you.” And over time, that thought process going into adulthood can make people feel like they’re a victim. Another thing that it comes from in childhood can be modeling the behavior of their parents as well. Children learn by observing the behaviors and the attitudes of the adults around them. And so if parents or caregivers are victims themselves—like some of you guys are like, “Oh yes, my mom or my dad plays the victim all the time”—well, children tend to model the behavior of their parents. Maybe your parents blamed other people or played the victim or talked about how powerless they were or maybe they’re just one of the people who just took no responsibility for their actions. Children tend to see that and adopt similar attitudes as well.
The Victim Mindset in Adulthood
Then what happens is children pick it up in childhood somehow, in some way, and then it starts to morph into adulthood. Victim mindset then carries into being an adult, and one of the most common signs of a victim mindset in adulthood is the tendency to blame other people for one’s problems or mistakes or failures. You know, blaming the boss for lack of career advancement: “Oh yeah, well, you know, he doesn’t like me, and so that’s why I’ve never been promoted.” Or blaming a partner for your relationship issues: “It’s their fault that our relationship is where it is.” Or blaming society because of where you grew up or your socioeconomic status.
It’s this pattern of thinking that we need to become aware of because it removes our individual sense of responsibility. And if we don’t have our individual sense of responsibility, how in the hell are we going to change our own lives? More than anything, it makes somebody feel powerless in their own life. You can either think that life is happening to you or life is happening for you. If it’s happening to you, then you have basically no control over your destiny. It’s this fixed mindset—if you’ve ever read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, that’s a fixed mindset where it’s just like, “There’s nothing I can do about it, that’s how it is.” A growth mindset is the exact opposite of that. Chronic complaining doesn’t fix a problem, but for me, I knew that complaining didn’t fix my problems, but I didn’t want to step up and actually fix my own problems, so I just complained all the time and made excuses.
Victim vs. Empowered Mindset: A Life-Changing Shift
So there’s the victim mindset on one side, and then what we want to actually have is the empowered mindset, right? The empowered mindset is really what we’re trying to work towards. Let’s look at these different examples:
- Career Advancement
- Victim Mindset: Might believe that their boss doesn’t recognize their hard work and they’ll never get promoted. “Oh, Stacy got promoted, and she hasn’t even been here as long as I have. It’s because he doesn’t like me.”
- Empowered Mindset: Would proactively ask for feedback, try to go, “Okay, how can I improve my skills and look for opportunities so they can showcase their work?”
- Health and Fitness
- Victim Mindset: “I can’t lose weight because it’s just my genetics, you know, diets never work for me.”
- Empowered Mindset: “Okay, you know, maybe it is genetics, maybe it is going to be harder for me to lose weight than the average person, but it’s not impossible for me to get healthier and to lose weight. So maybe I’ll consult with a nutritionist, maybe I’ll create a fitness plan, maybe I’ll decide to be consistent and make sure every single week that I’m going to the gym four times a week.”
- Finances
- Victim Mindset: Might feel like they’ll never get out of debt because of the bad economy or low income or because of their boss: “He doesn’t give me a raise.”
- Empowered Mindset: “Yeah, okay, maybe I did not get the degree I wanted, but I’m going to create a budget, I’m going to cut unnecessary expenses, I’m going to find additional income sources if I want to.”
- Relationships
- Victim Mindset: “Well, you know, my partner never listens to me, and the relationship is doomed because my partner does X, Y, and Z.”
- Empowered Mindset: “Hey, I need to get better in this relationship because it’s two people relating to each other. Maybe I should work on my communication skills and get better at communicating my needs clearly.”
An empowered mindset gives you a sense of personal agency. It says, “I’m going to be proactive here,” and it involves taking control of your life, maintaining a positive and resilient outlook.
Steps to Cultivate an Empowered Mindset
Here are the steps to make that mindset shift happen:
- Self-Awareness and Reflection
Self-awareness and reflection are really critical steps. You have to recognize that, yeah, I might have a little bit of a victim mindset—or a lot of a victim mindset—and you start reflecting on your thoughts and your patterns and your behaviors and your attitudes. Try journaling, try meditating, try going to therapy. Ask your friends and family what they think. That’s one thing that 1% of people reading this are going to do, but the 1% are going to have the biggest amount of change in their life. - Embrace Personal Responsibility
If it’s going to change, it’s up to me. You play a role in everything in your life, and the way you show up changes the way that everyone else shows up. When you notice yourself getting into the “Oh, why is this happening to me, woe is me,” instead of getting into that mindset, you’ve got to shift it and say, “Okay, what can I do about this?” Things that happened to you in your life are not necessarily all your fault, but it is your responsibility. My father passed away when I was 15 years old. He was an alcoholic throughout my childhood. I could just play victim and blame all of my life on him if I wanted to. It’s not my fault that he was an alcoholic, but it is my responsibility to do what I need to do in order to create the life I want. - Cognitive Reframing
Try this thing called cognitive reframing. It’s a really powerful tool for changing your negative thoughts. Reframe setbacks as, “Hey, this is an opportunity for me to learn and grow.” See life as a video game—I love to look at life as a video game—as if, “Hey, this challenge was brought to me for me to learn and grow and get better.” - Failure as Feedback
Failure is feedback. It doesn’t mean, “Oh, this is happening to me, I’m not going to be able to overcome this.” It’s going, “Okay, I just failed, but I don’t want that to just be a failure. What I want is to pull and extract the lesson from that thing.”
Conclusion
If you want to change your life, you have to develop this empowered mindset. All aspects of your life will become better when you switch from a victim mindset to an empowered mindset—I promise you this, just please trust me in it. Stop blaming, stop playing the victim. Your life will change dramatically, quickly. No one’s coming to save you—there’s no knight in shining armor around the corner. It’s on you to craft a life of success, resilience, and luxury. Take full responsibility, and watch how fast the world bends in your favor.
